


Loki the Pumpkin King

by lokifiction



Category: Loki (Marvel) - Fandom
Genre: Autumn, Domestic, Domestic Fluff, Gen, Halloween, halloween fluff, seriously just fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-21
Updated: 2017-10-21
Packaged: 2019-01-20 20:59:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12441702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lokifiction/pseuds/lokifiction
Summary: Loki is introduced to a traditional Halloween activity and turns out to be better at it than anyone had ever expected.





	Loki the Pumpkin King

“I’ve got a surprise for you,” I sang, entering the kitchen where my husband of nine months, Loki, stood, hovering over a soup I had had guided him in making.

“Don’t tell me you’ve got the tail to go with that ridiculous cat ears headpiece that you bought me yesterday,” he moaned, placing a lid on the pot and cutting off the flow of steam.

“You liked wearing those ears and you know it.” I crept up and embraced him from behind, burying my face between his shoulder blades. “Come on, your surprise is in the garage.”

I twisted our whimsical kitchen timer shaped like a jovial jack-o-lantern, set to alert us when the soup was to be taken off the flame, taking Loki’s hand and leading him downstairs and into the garage, where a table had been set up and covered in paper. Atop it were three pumpkins and several large knives, along with a set of dated pumpkin carving tools.

“What is this?” Loki scoffed, leaning against the doorway and glancing at me warily. “I thought those pumpkins were for a recipe.”

“They are,” I replied. “Sort of. I mean, the seeds are.”

“Your big surprise to me is an evening of pulling the innards out of pumpkins?” Loki cocked a dark eyebrow.

“No, that’s only part of it,” I insisted. “Do you remember those Midgardian Halloween traditions I’ve been telling you about and following through on? Like, decorating the house, baking everything in the shape of spiders and pumpkins, buying costumes, and making you watch all of those cheesy horror movies with me?”

“How could I forget? I went to go outside this morning and walked right into one of those false cobwebs you put up.” He tugged at his raven locks, thin pink lips shaped into a pout. “I’m still pulling chunks of it out of my hair.”

“Oh, you’ve got some right there.” Giggling, I reached over and pulled a piece of cotton from behind his ear. “And you’d best get in the spooky spirit, because I’m introducing the Prince of Asgard to yet another Halloween tradition: pumpkin carving.”

“Like those jack-o-lantern figurines you have placed everywhere?”

“Exactly. It’s so much fun, I promise you.” I pulled him over and pressed him down in a folding chair, settling down next to him. “Are you ready?”

“Admittedly, I’m a bit frightened to put this sharp of a tool in your hands.” Loki picked up one of the carving knives and held it before his face, eyes crossing slightly as he stared at it. “I saw the look of bloodlust in your eyes when we watched those horror movies, and frankly, after that, I don’t trust you very much with weapons anymore.”

“Says the man who has killed an enormous amount of people in his day,” I retorted, snatching back the knife.

“Excuse me, most of my kills were on a battlefield, and therefore don’t count.”

“Oh, whatever.” I stuck my tongue out at him, pulling a pumpkin towards myself and pushing another in Loki’s direction. “Step one: remove your pumpkin’s top.” To follow up on my order, I jammed the knife into the vegetable with surprising force, making a deep, resounding, popping sound as it penetrated the skin.

“Alright, I’m officially frightened.” Lo reached over and pried the knife from the pumpkin and placed it far from my reach with a familiar mischievous glint in his eye. “Let’s get that away from you now, dear.”

. “You quit that, or the pumpkin isn’t going to be the only one getting it,” I threatened, reaching over and fruitlessly attempting to snatch back the blade as Loki repeatedly pulled it just out of my reach.

“Not unless you swear to stop the pumpkin mutilation,” he teased.

“Did you not hear the name of this thing?” I demanded, putting my fists on my hips. “The entire act of it is pumpkin mutilation.”

. “Well, then it must be done humanely,” Loki laughed.

“Fine,” I agreed, breathing heavily and raising my right hand. “I swear. Now, can you please give me back my carving tool so I can teach you the ways of proper pumpkin mutilation?”

“Yes, but you’ll be under my very close supervision,” Loki warned, dramatically wagging a finger in my direction as he returned the knife to my hands.

“Thank you. Now, if you’ll allow me to continue,” I placed the blade back into the hole I had punctured and expanded it until the cap of the pumpkin was completely detached from the rest of it. “Stab your pumpkin and cut a hole, removing the top so that we have access to all of those delicious innards.”

“Sounds lovely.” Loki wrinkled his nose, doing as he was told. “What next?”

“This.” I stuck my hand all the way down into the pumpkin, seizing a giant handful of the seeds and their stringy coating, pulling hard to detach it and holding it up for Lo to see.

“We pull the innards out with our hands?” He crossed his arms over his chest.

“Yeah. It’s a lengthy process and gets pretty messy, but the tool for taking the guts out is really flimsy and doesn’t work very we- hey!” I gasped as a familiar green glow surrounded Loki’s pumpkin, and when it faded revealed all of his pumpkin’s innards in a neat little pile next to its shell.

“You couldn’t have done that before I got my hands all dirty?”

He flashed me a cheeky grin. “Sorry darling.”

I bumped him playfully, rolling my eyes. “Well, Mr. Magic Man, can you do that to mine so I can go wash my hands off?”

Loki bowed teasingly. “As you wish.”

When I returned to the garage, Loki was flipping through a book of carving stencils, brow furrowed in confused curiosity.

“What are these?” he inquired, flipping between two pages displaying scenes of a graveyard and a witch atop a broom.

“Those are stencils,” I replied, settling back down in my seat. “I don’t really use them much, but they’re good for inspiration.”

“Inspiration for what, exactly?”

“For the picture we’re going to carve into the pumpkins,” I answered cheerfully.

“We’re supposed to cut pictures out of pumpkin skins?” Loki picked up one of the carving tools and ran his thumb along the blade thoughtfully. “With what purpose?”

“We put tea candles inside and place them out on the front porch,” I explained. “It’s a very personal touch on a traditional Halloween decoration.”

“Darling, aren’t the gravestones outside reading ‘Here lies the Laufeysons’ personal touch enough?”

“Hey, those are adorable,” I defended. “And I happen to love pumpkin carving very much. It’s quite entertaining.”

“Well, then, what is your pumpkin’s scene going to be?” he questioned.

“I’m not sure yet,” I replied, taking another stencil book and thumbing through it. “Usually I go with some sort of theme, but I’m not sure what it should be this year.”

“How about us?” Loki suggested.

“Come again?”

“Why don’t we carve our pumpkins with images of us in Halloween situations?” he repeated.

“Oh, my god, sometimes you can be so corny and I love it,” I squealed, leaning over and taking his face in my hands. “Let’s do it.”

And so we set off to work, and I began to compose a comical and, slightly crude due to my lack of artistic ability, image of the silhouettes of Loki and I on broomsticks against the backdrop of the moon, and was admiring my handiwork until I looked over at Loki’s pumpkin, which robbed me of all self-esteem and pride.

Loki himself had carved a scene of the two of us in a haunting graveyard, using an excellent technique of not carving all the way through the skin to create a scene of haunting specters and fog about the extremely royal silhouettes of us, hands extended as if we were controlling the rise of the spirits.

“Loki,” I whined, glancing at it from all angles. “You never told me you were an artist.”

“I’m really not,” he assured. “These are just some scratches.”

“No, it’s ama…” I trailed off mid-sentence. “You used magic, didn’t you?”

“Actually, for once, no,” he replied. “I’m actually surprised it turned out this well.”

“You have got to do this more often,” I demanded, crawling into his lap and bestowing a long kiss of praise on his lips. “Now, we have to wait until it gets dark, and then we can christen our pumpkin babies.”

While we waited, together we carved a traditional jack-o-lantern face into the remaining pumpkin, drifted into the kitchen to roast pumpkin seeds, following a dated family recipe of mine, then curled up on the couch to use them as our popcorn whilst watching Halloween movies, Loki excitedly tugging me to my feet as the ending credits boomed from the speakers and dark had fully fallen. I pulled a few small candles from the linen closet, along with my lighter, lowering them into the pumpkins and assisting Loki in carrying them out onto the front porch, arranging them with the cliched pumpkin on the right and our couple’s carvings right next to each other on the left.

“Here, we should light each other’s,” I decided, tossing Lo the lighter, taking on a deep, resonating voice, drawn from low in my throat, as he knelt to transfer the small blaze to the tealight in my pumpkin. “Now announcing the official lighting ceremony of the Laufeyson family jack-o-lanterns. Drumroll, please.”

Loki obliged by slapping his thighs quickly as he passed the lighter to me and I lit the candle in his pumpkin, and together, with an extremely awkward maneuver due to the large size of both of our hands, lit the final jack-o-lantern together.

“Come on, I want to take in the scene from the curb.” I eagerly pulled my husband behind me as I dashed down the driveway, marveling at the haunting and, somehow comically spooky at the same time, scene of our house, with the false gravestones with bloody appendages rising from the ground, skeletons hanging from the trees, motion sensored vampire-popping-from-his-coffin figurine on the porch, steaming cauldron filled with dry ice leaking from the brim next to a black cat statue in front of the garage door, which was ornamented with an applique that made it seem as if some crude figure was trapped inside and attempting to crawl out, all topped off by our glowing pumpkins.

“It’s like a little Halloween wonderland,” I squealed. “I love it.”

“It’s our kingdom,” Loki remarked contently, then stepped down to his knee and procured a plastic black spider ring from his pocket. “Love, will you be my pumpkin queen?”

“Yes, but only if you’ll be my pumpkin king,” I replied, giggling and letting him slide the ring on my right hand, seeing as my left was already occupied. “Where on Earth did you get that?”

“It was in the basket with all of the candy,” he chuckled, rising to his feet and leaning in to kiss me once again. “Happy Halloween, darling.”.

“Oh, love, you are in for so much more fun,” I murmured as he pulled away, glancing deep into his glowing emerald eyes. “This Halloween hasn’t even started yet.”


End file.
